The Rock Music's Great, But Why Did They Fall In Love?

August 29, 1998|By OWEN McNALLY; Courant Staff Writer

Frankie Lymon, the doomed, heroin-addicted doo-wop star of the 1950s got a natural high out of getting married.

So he married three times, never bothering to get a divorce. That practice later ignited a bitter court battle among his three widows over $4 million worth of royalties from his biggest hit,``Why Do Fools Fall in Love.''

Borrowing that song title, the movie is a sometimes entertaining mix of farce, soap opera and tragedy. It recounts the tumultuous court action, which alternates with dramatic flashbacks to the singer's turbulent career and multiple marriages.

The closer the movie sticks to the early rock sound of the 1950s, with its close vocal harmonies, rocking saxes and pulsating rhythm-and- blues feel, the better it is. The best scenes come early on in the flashbacks when young Lymon belts out his early hits with the Teenagers. Shot from the stage, the camera work is splashy and kinetic. It creates a dreamlike, visceral feeling of the power of the music and ecstatic connection between performer and audience.

The next best asset is the sometimes engaging performances by the actresses as the warring widows. All the wives were badly ``used'' by Lymon. But they were crazy about him back then and still are as the film opens in the mid-1980s, years after he died from a drug overdose in 1968. Lymon had been on the skids for years before he died. But when Diana Ross revived ``Why Do Fools Fall in Love'' in the 1980s, the royalties began pouring in again.

So his three widows go to court to claim their share of this new bonanza.

Halle Barry plays the ultra-glamorous wife, Zora Taylor, a singer with the The Platters. Vivica A. Fox is Elizabeth Waters, a street-smart shoplifter. Elizabeth is so loyal to Lymon that she works the streets to support his heroin habit. In prissy contrast to these two flamboyant ladies is Emira Eagle, a tradition- bound, Southern school teacher played by Lela Rochon.

These three play off each other well, even if they're stuck with painfully lame lines. As Lymon, Larenz Tate is too bland, except when he's in dynamic music numbers where he gets to dance or do a split. But there's never really a serious attempt to get under Lymon's handsome exterior to find out what made him tick or even what made him shoot up.

Pamela Reed, in the oddest role of all, plays an astoundingly passive presiding judge at the hearing on who's going to get the $4 million. Anarchy rules in Judge Lambrey's court. Even TV's Judge Judy never would have permitted such outbursts.

Even worse, screenwriter Tim Andrews and director Gregory Nava seem in the grip of a similar kind of crippling lethargy as they passively let this initially promising movie run on and on.

Paul Mazursky plays the villain Morris Levy, the record company owner who profited handsomely from Lymon's recordings. The Levy character has the unenviable burden of being the emblem of all the white producers who ever ripped off black artists, not just as here in the 1950s and early '60s, but from the beginning of the recording industry in the 1920s.

Some cinematic effects regenerate the film's flagging pace. Some flop, especially the montages in the flashbacks. These have a disconcertingly vague, splotchy look, almost as if someone had splattered the camera lens with a gooey pizza.

``Why Do Fools Fall In Love'' has its nostalgic pleasures. And it always comes to life whenever Little Richard, who, of course, plays himself, bursts onto the screen to proclaim his own godlike role in the creation of rock 'n` roll, if not also of the universe.

Rated R, with dimly seen sexual activities shot through a glass darkly; a severe beating and the defenestration of a tiny, hairy dog.

WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE, directed by Gregory Nava; screenplay by Tina Andrews; director of photography, Edward Lachman; original music by Stephen James Taylor. A Warner Bros. release of a Rhino Film Production, playing today at area cinemas. Running time: 112 minutes.